The Young and The Restless | And boats might fly

Perhaps it was an age thing; I don’t recall being drawn to many museums in my early 20s unless I was in Europe and there was art in them.

Now, in my 40s, I enjoy many aspects of history a little more, but it’s still probably not the reason I finally stopped at the lakeside town on my last drive-by.

My motivation was mostly because my youngest teen’s liberal obsession with aviation remains unyielding.

If we visit somewhere, anywhere, that has something, anything, to do with aircraft, it would be remiss of us not to feed his sole interest.

(At least it was his sole interest until season three of Squid Game was released. Please keep me in your thoughts throughout this difficult time.)

I might be exposing my ignorance by revealing that in all those shuttles past Lake Boga, with the ‘Home of the Catalina’ signs and plane shells along the highway’s edges beckoning me into the museum, I didn’t even realise that it harboured such significant war history.

I’m not even sure why I thought Lake Boga had a flying boat museum.

I’m not sure I even thought about it at all.

As it turns out, Lake Boga was the No.1 RAAF Flying Boat Repair Depot during World War II.

During its operation, it serviced 416 aircraft after Japanese forces attacked Broome in 1942.

On July 12 that same year, Lake Boga received its first flying boat when stores and equipment were flown in from Rathmines, NSW.

At the height of operations, there were 39 officers, 802 airmen and 102 WAAAF who staffed the depot.

The works ranged from operational damage repair to complete overhauls.

Catalinas were by no means the only flying boats serviced at the rural town; there were several others, including Martin Mariners, Kingfishers, Walruses, Sunderlands and Dorniers.

All of them are represented within the museum today in one way or another, with particular sections dedicated to the US and Netherlands aircraft and crew who flew in during World War II.

We visited late in the day on a Sunday, about an hour before closing time.

Our visit started with the screening of a local history documentary in the museum’s ‘Camouflage Cinema’.

Being from a foreign era for many of us, the black-and-white wartime footage of planes and servicemen seemed almost surreal, therefore especially attention-grabbing.

It was a really well put-together 20-minute package that held ours and the 10 or so other latecomers’ gazes for its duration.

The museum’s tourist brochure boasts that the attraction sees more than 12,000 visitors a year.

It’s more popular than I previously gave it credit for.

Maybe the other visitors knew what I didn’t before coming; that inside there’s a large collection of war memorabilia, books and machinery.

Some exhibits have impressive interactive displays.

There’s an entire Catalina plane, aka flying boat, inside the main building and a sunken underground communications bunker outside.

You can climb up a ladder and put your torso into the plane and look directly down its guts to a companion peering back at you from the bomb-aiming window at the other end.

And, you can venture down into the bunker and tap out some Morse code as you browse the comprehensive displays in each section, furnished with antique phones, typewriters and switchboards.

While it wasn’t open during our visit, there’s also a café on site that overlooks Lake Boga, where the flying boats landed and were moored during the war.

We settled for some cold drinks for the trip home from the well-stocked gift shop, which I think were drunk by the time I extracted the kids from the flying fox at the adjacent playground on the lake’s shore anyway.

I think discovering this place 20 years after I lived in close proximity to it, and realising what a remarkably broad collection of interesting items and information it holds, is a good reminder to remember to be a tourist in your own town every once in a while.

Who knows what you might discover?

From my experience, it could be what once was a bustling secret war base in the middle of no man’s land.